Try out one or more of these helpful apps to make your book writing project easier and more fun.
Apps for Editing
If your goal is clear, uncomplicated writing, then the Hemingway app can help you with that by providing stats and identifying areas for improvement.
Hemingway analyzes your text for readability, indicating the grade level needed to understand your text, and highlights sentences it considers hard to read. It finds instances of passive voice and adverbs, and identifies phrases with a simpler alternative. The app also counts the paragraphs, sentences, words, characters and letters in your text, as well as the amount of time it takes to read.
The Hemingway app is best at analyzing non-fiction writing or else simpler, less poetic styles of fiction. You can try a basic browser-based version of Hemingway on their website, but the full-feature desktop version costs $6.99. It is available for Windows and OS X and works with text and markdown files.
Apps for Research
Writer’s block happens to even the best writers from time to time. When you need a little inspiration, you might take a look at The Brainstormer. This iPhone and iPad app aims to spark your creative fires with a base of ideas to draw from.
Spin the wheel to randomly generate character, plot and setting ideas. But if you aren’t content what with The Brainstomer comes up with, it also gives you the option to create your own base to randomly draw from when you spin the wheel.
The Brainstormer is available for iOS for $1.99 on the Apple itunes store.
Good writing is built on a good selection of words. That is why many writers find it useful to consult English reference materials when searching for the perfect building block. There are many reference books available, but WordBook is one that you can get for your iPhone and iPad. It is a dictionary and thesaurus, but with more features like spoken pronunciations, bookmarking, words of the day and both American and British spellings.
You can find WordBook for iOS on the Apple itunes store for $1.99.
Evernote is a storage and organizational tool that works with a variety of items, from notes you type to articles on the web and audio files to pictures.
While it is not exclusively for writers, Evernote can be useful to writers during the creative process. You can use it to jot down ideas and organize your research. Don’t remember that great idea you had last month? Evernote has a built-in search engine. You can also set due dates for notes.
Evernote is available as standalone software and as an online service. It works on different devices and you can sync them up.
Basic Evernote is free. Paid annual subscribers receive access to more advanced features. A Plus subscription is $34 per year while a Premium subscription with unlimited uploads costs $45 per year. Evernote is available from the website for Windows, OS X, iOS, Android and other platforms.
You might also consider other aids such as mindmapping software to diagram ideas and music streaming services to get you in the right mood to write. But whichever tools you ultimately choose to write a book are only there to help: the secret ingredients to any good book are you and what you have to say.
Be sure to check out Tools For Writers Part 1 – Apps For Writing